MSN Breaking News-Nnamdi Kanu: the new voice of pro-Biafra independence

May 30th approaches and from all indications it will be a day to be recorded in the annals of Biafran history when Pro-Biafran movement organizations led by IPOB demonstrates to the world through a peaceful civil disobedience that their demand for independent state of Biafra is real. IPOB has called for businesses to shut down and for people to stay indoors as a sign of civil disobedience in memory of and in solidarity with the millions of Biafrans killed and starved to death during the Igbo Genocide and Biafra/Nigeria civil war which lasted from 1967-1970. The IPOB strategy is to employ a non violent peaceful means. War broke out in 1967 following an Igbo genocide in many parts of Nigeria through which Igbos are targeted and killed including over 300 senior Igbo Army officers in the Nigerian army. Nnamdi Kanu spoke to MSN from his Umuahia parent’s home and below are parts of the conversation he had with MSN News.

“Nnamdi Kanu walks slowly across the courtyard of his family home in Umuahia, southeast Nigeria, as a crowd of supporters in the red, black and green of the Biafran flag hail him as their saviour. Eighteen months in custody does not appear to have affected his fight against Nigeria.
“I am more determined than ever,” Kanu, who heads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, tells AFP calmly. Kanu, who was released on bail at the end of April, still faces trial on treason charges.

“But there is no question of his remaining silent as a key date approaches on Tuesday: the 50th anniversary of the declaration of an independent Republic of Biafra. The secession of the Igbo people in the southeast sparked a bloody civil war that lasted nearly three years until 1970. More than one million people died of the effects of war, famine and disease.

Kanu says his aim is “civil disobedience until we get a referendum (on self-determination)”, calling it “the only way forward”.

‘Deliberate’ retribution

After the war, Biafra was reintegrated into Nigeria, an ethnic and religious hotch-potch of nearly 190 million people where sectarian tensions regularly flare. But in “Igboland”, the dream of independence never really disappeared, fueled by a sense that the Nigerian government had abandoned them — perhaps deliberately — after the conflict.

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